News Comment/COMENTARI AL DIA

Spain Fears Catalan Democracy/ESPANYA TEM LA DEMOCRÀCIA CATALANA

Spain Fears Catalan Democracy

by Geoff Cowling, British Consul in Catalonia 2002-2005

Marchioness Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, international director of Aznar’s FAES foundation, holds French nationality but is a PP MP for Madrid. She is married to the Catalan-speaking entrepreneur Joaquin Guell, also an aristocrat. Below: British consul Geoff Cowley called the 11 September 2013 250 mile human chain across Catalonia “colossal and extraordinary.”

Spain is increasingly desperate about suppressing the demand of Catalans to vote and is now interfering in the Scottish referendum. An article in the Financial Times by the PP MP Marchioness Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, full of lies on Scotland and of course Catalonia -standard fare in Madrid- is forcefully taken apart by the former British consul in Catalonia Geoff Cowling:

“The article by Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, ”Europe cannot afford to give into the separatists” deserves comment. It is wrong to describe the Scottish independence referendum as “a grave challenge from regional separatists.” Scotland is not a region. It is a nation in its own right within the United Kingdom. The Scottish and English parliaments were joined in an Act of Union in 1707. It is the democratic right of the people of the Scottish nation to vote for the repeal of that act if they so wish. Catalonia too is a nation as defined by the Estatut, an act passed by the Spanish parliament in 2006. To describe both nations as tribes betrays a colonialist mind. The UN is quite clear on the rights of nations: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” For the European Union to “confront separatism” to “unmask the hypocrisy of nationalism” and “play the legal card of the EU treaties” against Scotland and Catalonia would be to tread on very controversial ground. The article accuses the Catalan government of distorting historical facts in this 300th anniversary year of the fall of Catalonia at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. It is worth recalling that Catalonia was effectively an independent nation until 1714. During that war, Catalonia was allied with England under the Treaty of Genoa of 1705 and fought for the Habsburg cause against the Bourbon Spain. When the British government withdrew its support for the Habsburgs and signed the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Catalonia fought on alone. It took a one-year siege by a combined French and Spanish Bourbon army to break Barcelon‘s defences which fell on 11 September 1714. Thousands of defending Catalans were killed in the siege and in the retribution which followed. Catalonia‘s ancient parliament, its identity, language and culture were crushed. Large parts of Barcelona were razed to the ground. Catalonia did not voluntarily join Spain, it was brutally conquered. Catalonia was treated little differently during the Spanish Civil War when Barcelona was bombed by Franco‘s rebel air force, killing 1,300. Catalonia‘s elected President Lluis Companys was forced to flee into France. He was extradited and shot by Franco in 1940 at Montjuic Castle overlooking Barcelona. Lluis Companys remains the only incumbent president in Europe ever to have been executed. No apology or posthumous pardon has been given. Catalonia remembers these historical facts -they are not “imaginary historical grievances.” On its National Day (La Diada) on 11 September 2012, one and a half million Catalans filled Barcelona‘s streets waving the Catalan Senyera flag and calling for independence. On La Diada last year they formed a 250-mile independence human chain from the French border to Valencia. The independence movement is deeply rooted in Catalan society, fuelled by every rebuff from Madrid. Like Scotland‘s, Catalonia‘s parliament has a majority in favour of an independence referendum. The Westminster parliament has given Scotland the right to decide its future. In contrast, the Spanish parliament in Madrid refuses to debate Catalonia‘s request. Democracy is not feared in the UK -it is embraced. Democracy should not be feared in Spain either.”